Are you sure?
This action might not be possible to undo. Are you sure you want to continue?
Nisei Soldiers Break Their Silence: Coming Home to Hood River
by Linda Tamura
Ratings:
549 pages9 hours
Summary
Nisei Soldiers Break Their Silence is a compelling story of courage, community, endurance, and reparation. It shares the experiences of Japanese Americans (Nisei) who served in the U.S. Army during World War II, fighting on the front lines in Italy and France, serving as linguists in the South Pacific, and working as cooks and medics. The soldiers were from Hood River, Oregon, where their families were landowners and fruit growers. Town leaders, including veterans' groups, attempted to prevent their return after the war and stripped their names from the local war memorial. All of the soldiers were American citizens, but their parents were Japanese immigrants and had been imprisoned in camps as a consequence of Executive Order 9066. The racist homecoming that the Hood River Japanese American soldiers received was decried across the nation.
Linda Tamura, who grew up in Hood River and whose father was a veteran of the war, conducted extensive oral histories with the veterans, their families, and members of the community. She had access to hundreds of recently uncovered letters and documents from private files of a local veterans' group that led the campaign against the Japanese American soldiers. This book also includes the little known story of local Nisei veterans who spent 40 years appealing their convictions for insubordination.
Watch the book trailer: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hHMcFdmixLk
Publisher: University of Washington PressReleased: Dec 15, 2012ISBN: 9780295804460Format: book
Book Preview
Nisei Soldiers Break Their Silence - Linda Tamura
THE SCOTT AND LAURIE OKI SERIES IN ASIAN AMERICAN STUDIES
From a Three-Cornered World: New and Selected Poems by James Masao Mitsui
Imprisoned Apart: The World War II Correspondence of an Issei Couple by Louis Fiset
Storied Lives: Japanese American Students and World War II by Gary Okihiro
Phoenix Eyes and Other Stories by Russell Charles Leong
Paper Bullets: A Fictional Autobiography by Kip Fulbeck
Born in Seattle: The Campaign for Japanese American Redress by Robert Sadamu Shimabukuro
Confinement and Ethnicity: An Overview of World War II Japanese American Relocation Sites by Jeffery F. Burton, Mary M. Farrell, Florence B. Lord, and Richard W. Lord
Judgment without Trial: Japanese American Imprisonment during World War II by Tetsuden Kashima
Shopping at Giant Foods: Chinese American Supermarkets in Northern California by Alfred Yee
Altered Lives, Enduring Community: Japanese Americans Remember Their World War II Incarceration by Stephen S. Fugita and Marilyn Fernandez
Eat Everything Before You Die: A Chinaman in the Counterculture by Jeffery Paul Chan
Form and Transformation in Asian American Literature edited by Zhou Xiaojing and Samina Najmi
Language of the Geckos and Other Stories by Gary Pak
Nisei Memories: My Parents Talk about the War Years by Paul Howard Takemoto
Growing Up Brown: Memoirs of a Bridge Generation Filipino American by Peter Jamero
Letters from the 442nd: The World War II Correspondence of a Japanese American Medic by Minoru Masuda; edited by Hana Masuda and Dianne Bridgman
Shadows of a Fleeting World: Pictorial Photography and the Seattle Camera Club by David F. Martin and Nicolette Bromberg
Signs of Home: The Paintings and Wartime Diary of Kamekichi Tokita by Barbara Johns and Kamekichi Tokita
Nisei Soldiers Break Their Silence: Coming Home to Hood River by Linda Tamura
NISEI SOLDIERS BREAK THEIR SILENCE
COMING HOME TO HOOD RIVER
Linda Tamura
UNIVERSITY OF WASHINGTON PRESS
Seattle and London
This book is published with the assistance of a grant from the Scott and Laurie Oki Endowed Fund for publications in Asian American Studies.
© 2012 by the University of Washington Press
Printed and bound in the United States of America
Design by Thomas Eykemans
17 16 15 14 13 12 5 4 3 2 1
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording, or any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.
UNIVERSITY OF WASHINGTON PRESS
PO Box 50096, Seattle, WA 98145, USA
www.washington.edu/uwpress
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA
Tamura, Linda, 1949–
Nisei soldiers break their silence : coming home to Hood River / Linda Tamura.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-0-295-99209-9 (pbk. : alk. paper)
1. World War, 1939–1945—Participation, Japanese American. 2. World War, 1939–1945—Japanese Americans. 3. Japanese American soldiers—Oregon—Hood River—History—20th century. 4. Japanese American soldiers—Oregon—Hood River—Biography. 5. Hood River (Or.)—Ethnic relations—History—20th century. I. Title.
D753.8.T36 2012 940.54'8173089956079561—dc23 2012011201
The paper used in this publication is acid-free and meets the minimum requirements of American National Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI Z39.48–1984.∞
ISBN 978-0-295-80446-0 (ebook)
To the memories of Dad and Uncle Mam, whose military service prompted my many questions, and Mom, for her abiding faith.
This was not a proud chapter in the history of the Hood River valley. I know it's an agonizing chapter that some would just as soon not reopen. But a wound as deep as this one cannot heal if it is not appropriately treated. Today we get about that healing process with the best of our ability.
Congressman Greg Walden
Memorial Day, 2011, Hood River, Oregon
CONTENTS
Preface
Acknowledgments
Oral History Methodology
Introduction
PART I: EARLY YEARS
1 Growing Up in Two Worlds
BALANCING JAPANESE AMERICA
2 Nice People So Long as They Are in a Minority
THE JAPANESE AMERICAN COMMUNITY IN HOOD RIVER
PART II: WORLD WAR II
3 Why Didn't You Tell Us the War Was Coming?
COMMUNITY FALLOUT FROM PEARL HARBOR
4 Fighting for Good Uncle Sam
NISEI ENTER THE MILITARY
5 The Two-Sided Sword
WARTIME CHANGES FOR JAPANESE AMERICAN FAMILIES
6 Getting Shot from Ahead of Us and Behind Us
WAR IN THE SOUTH PACIFIC
7 From Somewhere in Europe
WAR IN EUROPE
8 I've Got a Lot of Fighting to Do Right Here
CHARGED WITH WILLFUL DISOBEDIENCE
9 Discard My Uniform for Good
THE END OF THE WAR
PART III: AFTER THE WAR
10 No Japes Wanted in Hood River
THE HOOD RIVER SITUATION
11 Ninety Percent Are Against the Japs!
VETERANS AND THEIR FAMILIES RETURN
12 You Could Feel It
RESETTLING IN THE COMMUNITY AND ELSEWHERE
13 Time Is a Good Healer
REBUILDING
14 Guilty of Courage
DISCIPLINE BARRACK BOYS' APPEALS
PART IV: TODAY
15 Opening the Closets of History
THE COMMUNITY TODAY
16 No Ordinary Soldiers
THE PATRIOT TEST
Afterword
Notes
Selected Bibliography
Index
PREFACE
ON the evening of November 29, 1944, residents of a small, rural community defaced a downtown memorial board that listed the names of 1,600 men and women who had served in the armed forces. By the next morning, sixteen names had been blotted out, dashed with black paint:
George Akiyama
Masaaki Asai
Taro Asai
Noboru Hamada
Kenjiro Hayakawa
Shigenobu Imai
Fred Mitsuo Kinoshita
George Kinoshita
Sagie Nishioka
Mamoru Noji
Henry K. Norimatsu
Katsumi Sato
Harry Osamu Takagi
Eichi Wakamatsu
Johnny Y. Wakamatsu
Bill Shyuichi Yamaki
Those young men were all American citizens, but they had one commonality: their parents were of Japanese descent. (The names of Sho Endow, Sumio Fukui, Frank Hachiya, Setsu Shitara, Fred Sumoge, Nob Takasumi, and Harry Tamura were not on the memorial board because they had registered for the draft outside Hood River. Isao Namba's name, mistaken for a Finnish name, remained.)
That act—and an inflamed campaign to discourage the return of these men and their families—placed the community at the center of a nationwide debate about the meaning of citizenship in this country.
This is the story of those men, their exploits during World War II, and their relationships to their community—my hometown.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
THEY were reluctant to share their stories with a Sansei (third generation) who might put their words in print. But eventually they indulged me, and that made all the difference. I am indebted to each of the veterans who so willingly spoke with me, especially Uncle Mam Noji, George Akiyama, and Dad, the first three to participate. Members of their families (including spouses, siblings, and children) also assisted by telling of their family experiences and by helping to locate photos.
I am grateful to two who assisted in carrying out this project. Joan Yasui Emerson ably conducted eight interviews with local community members, even taking an oral history class from my mentor, Charlie Morrissey. And Tim Rooney volunteered to tape-record veterans' interviews and did so with such good nature that the lights and mikes seemed little distraction.
The resourcefulness and openness of Keith Doroski and Bud Collins of the Hood River American Legion added immensely to this project. Other locals who provided important information include Dallas Fridley, regional economist; Connie Nice, The History Museum, Hood River County; Melanee Gillette, Chamber of Commerce; and the late Dave Burkhart, former agriculture extension agent. The late Harry Inukai and Bessie Asai and Marie Asai helped me to collect local data, and Hiro Nishimura assisted in gathering materials about the Military Intelligence Service.
Other skilled resource experts include Gary Klein, Ford Schmidt, and Rich Schmidt, at the Mark O. Hatfield Library, and Dick Breen and Tim Kelly, at the J. W. Long Law Library, all at Willamette University; Alice LaViolette, Oregon State Library; Gary Halvorson, Oregon State Archives; Kenneth Schlessinger, National Archives and Records Administration; Marie Masumoto, Toshiko McCallum, and Jane Nakasako, Hirasaki National Resource Center at the Japanese American National Museum; Kevin Flanagan, National American Legion Library; Mike Wells, Office of Policy and Planning, National Center for Veterans Analysis and Statistics, U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs; and the staffs at the Franklin D. Roosevelt Library, Department of the Army, the Public Library of Anniston-Calhoun County, and the Tualatin Public Library.
I greatly appreciated the critiques of scholars who read portions of my manuscript, including Roger Daniels, Art Hansen, Eric Muller, Ralph Falconeri, and Paul Spickard. At Willamette University, the early support of my deans, the late Larry Cress, Ken Nolley, and Carol Long, paved the way for my work. My writing group colleagues in the Graduate School of Education—Karen Hamlin, Steve Rhine, Hank Weddington, and Neil Liss—gave me invaluable feedback and questions about early drafts.
Special thanks goes to Willamette University for the Atkinson grants that helped to support my research. Many thanks to editors at the University of Washington Press who guided my book through its stages and gave me such helpful feedback: Beth Fuget, Marianne Keddington-Lang, Mary Ribesky, and Laura Iwasaki.
Most of all, I thank colleagues, friends, and family who invited me to tell about the veterans and who continue to honor them, for their stories must not be lost.
ORAL HISTORY METHODOLOGY
THEY were quiet, modest men who were more comfortable puttering in their gardens than speaking into microphones. From others, I knew they had overcome tremendous difficulties—but those stories seemed locked in their minds. Might they be willing to bare their souls and help someone from another generation examine the legacy of Nisei (second generation) veterans? I had a few advantages. The mothers of three of them were among the people I had interviewed for my book on the Hood River Issei (first generation)—and all had seemed exuberant about their participation. Two were relatives: my father and my uncle, who admitted that they would talk about their military past only because I was their daughter and niece. So my initial goal was to make it safe—even invigorating—for the men to reflect on their past.
We began at my parents' home in Hood River. Three Nisei (my dad, Harry Tamura; my uncle, Mam Noji; and George Akiyama) sat on the living room sofa and even agreed to let a friend, Tim Rooney, videotape our interviews. (I'd met with each independently and secured their written agreements and survey information.) We began with collective questions about their lives as retirees and then moved to their early schooling, their parents, and World War II. They answered spontaneously; a response from one generally prompted elaboration from the others. (We all lunched on Mom's delicious chow mein afterward.) Two days later, I interviewed the trio at other venues: Panorama Point overlooking the valley orchards, where they spoke of their Issei parents' early labor and influence in their lives; Frank Hachiya's gravesite at Idlewilde Cemetery, where they spoke of his sacrifice and saluted him; and a valley orchard, where they immediately examined the trees and reminisced about life as farmers. After that, they were each willing to be interviewed one-on-one in their homes.
Later on, I audiotaped interviews with other Nisei veterans and then expanded to their siblings and finally to members of the mainstream Hood River community, hoping to gain as many viewpoints as possible. Making contact with two Nisei discipline barrack boys (imprisoned for insubordination) added a new dimension. After several phone conversations, I met each in Los Angeles for more extensive, face-to-face interviews. One of them, who had been very open on the phone, was hesitant about being tape-recorded, confiding, I'm not a public person.
Eventually he agreed because, he said, You asked
and I just want the story out.
Interviewing non-Nikkei residents brought its own challenges. My friend Joan Yasui Emerson graciously joined me, interviewing eleven locals. It became clear, however, that some who spoke with us were reluctant to uncover the full story; a few became evasive about or forgot
details of their own involvement. Similar to Hood River Nisei, I developed my own internal radar for sensing people's reluctance, even misgivings, about conveying their feelings or discussing actions of the past. A stranger once approached me with a simple I know who you are.
There were definitely stories that were inaccessible to me, but I am indebted to those who were willing to share theirs.
Obtaining a range of oral history testimonies gave me access to candid, personal stories that led to a fuller examination of issues contributing to Hood River's story. This process required that I prepare fully in order to ask open-ended, neutral, objective questions that respected the integrity of each person while also examining different viewpoints. Such interviews led to often surprising access to documents and photos but also required further investigation in order to answer other questions or verify details, the reason I often cited several sources in my notes. (This included examining and cataloging citations from various newspapers, including the Hood River News and other local publications.) Ultimately, my goal was to examine all sides of an issue so that I could present a more balanced picture. When inserting quotations in the text, I did sometimes make minor editorial changes intended to clarify an interviewee's point (for example, replacing pronouns or adding assumed words) or to reduce redundancy. I did my best to follow the Oral History Association's principles and best practices, striving to retain the integrity of the narrator's perspective.
My most gratifying moments occurred when Nisei accompanied me to my speaking engagements, for they always received resounding accolades. Once, four Nisei heard their own voices depicted when four friends joined me to tell their story. Another time, my Uncle Mam acknowledged a standing ovation by continuing to videotape the crowd and then asking his own questions (on tape) when participants came to shake his hand.
At one event, two Sansei approached me separately, wondering, How did you get Uncle ―― to talk so much?
The uncle they knew typically spoke no more than five to six words at a time, they confided. Those comments underscored the purpose of this project—and how far we had come. Nisei veterans did willingly share their stories. Now I am fortunate to continue their telling.
INTRODUCTION
IT was the fall of 1945, and the GIs were finally headed home. War weary and eager to rejoin their families, they were nonetheless anxious about how their former neighbors would receive them. During the four years since they had been inducted into the U.S. Army, their hometown community had become a national spectacle, featured in newspaper and magazine editorials across the country. Now citizens throughout the nation were closely observing the soldiers' return.
George Akiyama had barely survived point-blank Nazi gunfire in France and Italy and wore a uniform decorated with both the Silver and the Bronze Star. On the way to his family's farm, he decided to get a haircut at a downtown barbershop he had patronized before the war. I went up there and sat in the barber chair,
he recalled. The barber comes up to me with a razor in his hand and says, ‘I ought to slit your throat.’ I looked at him and said, ‘Boy, you're worse than some of those Germans we fought.’ I just walked out.
Following six months of language study at the Military Intelligence Language School in Minnesota, Mamoru (or Mam, as his family and friends called him) Noji had served in the South Pacific, translating military documents and interrogating prisoners of war. Shortly after he returned home, a neighbor asked to purchase the family's eighty-acre farm. When Mam explained that the family would then have no income, the single-minded neighbor countered, Well, you could move.
No, replied Mam, leaving was out of the question.
Both native sons, George Akiyama and Mam Noji were Nisei, children of Japanese immigrants, who had been born, raised, and educated in Hood River, Oregon, a hamlet community nestled along the Columbia River Gorge at the foot of Mount Hood. Near the turn of the century, their fathers were among the Issei, the immigrant Japanese, lured by the demand for cheap labor in the valley's fertile, forested terrain. Working as section hands on the railroad, clearing land for property owners, and working as mill hands, they contributed to the area's burgeoning development. Eventually, they settled in the pristine valley. Laboring ten hours a day, they cleared acres of fir, pine, and shrubs, transforming the area into thriving farmland that eventually bore strawberries, asparagus, and a good share of the valley's famed pears and apples. As they began to prosper and as their numbers increased, attacks from nativist groups and other farmers became more frequent. In 1920, a state report on the sentiment of Oregon communities toward Japanese residents pinpointed the Japanese Question
in Oregon as more acute in Hood River than in any other place in Oregon.
¹ By 1930 the valley's Japanese population had grown to 514, second only to that of Oregon's Multnomah County (home of Portland).²
War brought the ultimate paradox. Five months after World War II began, the Akiyama and Noji families, like 108,000 other Nikkei, or people of Japanese descent,³ were forced to abandon their West Coast homes, properties, and businesses while their sons, including George and Mam, served in the U.S. armed services. After President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066 in 1942, all West Coast Nikkei, even those who were American citizens, were confined to government-run concentration camps in desolate parts of the country.⁴ It was not until the spring of 1945, three years later, that their families were finally able to return home.
Yet the Hood River Nikkei were still unwelcome in their Pacific Northwest hometown. Full-page newspaper ads, signed by hundreds of community residents, warned So Sorry Please! Japs Are Not Wanted in Hood River.
Leaders of a local veterans' group proposed a constitutional amendment to deprive Akiyama, Noji, and other Nisei of their American citizenship. A year before they returned home, in a move that brought nationwide condemnation to their hometown, residents removed the names of sixteen servicemen from the community honor roll that listed locals serving in the military. The names of Akiyama and Noji were blotted out along with those of fourteen other Japanese Americans.⁵ Newspaper editors and columnists across the country criticized the action as exclusionist: Tops in blind hatred…an all-American low in intolerance and bigotry,
Colliers commented; The Defender, an army newspaper, stated, We cannot forgive them, because they indeed know what they do
; and the New York PM gave Hood River the Award for Most Contemptible Deed of the Year.
⁶ U.S. military commanders, GIs, and even federal officials weighed in against the community of 11,500,⁷ inflaming debate among citizens in the valley and across the country.
Still, despite the national furor and their own private fears about their hometown reception, Akiyama and Noji were among the 40 percent of Japanese Americans who chose to return to the valley. This was their home, where they had been raised and schooled. Here were their families' properties, where their parents had invested raw muscle power in transforming marshland and stump-covered hills into fledgling farms whose seedlings had finally borne fruit. Some felt they had no choice but to resettle, for their livelihood was rooted in this valley. Yet there were raw emotions and lingering doubts. It hurts,
mused Noji. Your feelings for friends turn upside down. You could see it in their faces.
This is the story of those young men who served their country yet were unwelcome in their hometown. The story is difficult to tell, since many veterans' families still reside in the community. Some might ask: Why bring up the past? This modern-day mecca of windsurfing, winter sports, and upscale tourism is physically and culturally unlike the war-entangled farming community of the 1940s. Newcomers and younger residents are largely unaware of their valley's once sordid reputation. And most locals, both Nikkei and non-Nikkei old-timers, would prefer not to dredge up their community's tainted past. As one Nisei veteran observed, You don't want to admit everything that's bad because otherwise it'd be all bad.
For many of the now elderly (and few remaining) Nisei, reliving those memories would be an excursion into shame, peeling back the patches of self-respect and dignity they have worked hard to restore. Preferring to exorcise this historical blight from their memories and move on, they are understandably reluctant to disturb the fragile skin over those wounds and to stir up repressed memories of their postwar return. It's simpler to avoid reliving the past, the contradictions, the questions—even their World War II service. As one local Nikkei explained, The silence here about the war years has been deafening.
Yet the past is irrefutable. Actions in the valley grew to symbolize an exclusionist and unpatriotic image of the place, becoming grist for debate among citizens across the country. After a local Nisei died during a precarious mission in the South Pacific, sentiments intensified, prompting local and national repercussions. Remnants of that blight still linger—yet little has been told. This book is about the men at the center of this controversy and their evolution from farm kids to young adults forced to rebuild their lives, economically and socially, and make peace with their hometown. One became the first to challenge the state's civil service system when he was denied a position because of race. Two spent forty years challenging courts-martial, convictions, and imprisonment. This book addresses festering questions: What led to eruptions of hostility in the community that bore life consequences for these Nisei? What memories and reflections illuminate those situations? What should we learn from the past that can enlighten our future?
The voices of these soldiers, their families, and members of the mainstream white community depicted in this book are based on more than one hundred oral history interviews as well as correspondence and family and archival documents. Sources include five hundred letters and documents uncovered from files of the local American Legion post, which led the anti-Japanese campaign during the pre- and postwar years. Also prominent is the little known case of dishonorably discharged GIs who had been sequestered under armed guard during President Roosevelt's visit to their base camp.
This study addresses a gap in scholarly research on the resettlement of Japanese Americans after World War II. Historian Arthur A. Hansen maintains that this period has been relegated to the margins of scholarly literature and popular memory
and that this neglect promotes the false concept of a model minority
who instantly metamorphosed after the war.⁸ Brian Niiya has recognized the lack of a definitive study on resettlement.⁹ Tetsuden Kashima has challenged Japanese Americans' collective social amnesia
regarding this crisis period,
culminating in shame and suppression of the wartime experience.¹⁰ Though Hood River is commonly referenced in the annals of Japanese American history as a disgraceful wartime example, resources are isolated and limited. And little is devoted to the returning GIs. If these stories are to be preserved, they must be told now.
Among those Hood River veterans (seventeen from the honor roll and seven who were unlisted), only four were alive in 2011. Sadly, this generation of now elderly citizens is slipping away. In 2012, with fewer than 1.5 million World War II veterans alive, the Department of Veteran Affairs noted that 680 were expected to pass away each day.¹¹
This, then, is the untold journey of these largely unheralded veterans. Embedded in a past in which fear, mistrust, and sheer economics overtook a community's ethics and commitment to civil rights, it also raises questions about the parallel challenges we face today as well as the actions we should take to resolve them.
Local Nisei Bessie Asai reminisced about those difficult times: We can forgive but it's hard to forget.
It is in remembering that we can learn from—and act to correct—mistakes from the past.
PART I
EARLY YEARS
ONE
Growing Up in Two Worlds
BALANCING JAPANESE AMERICA
WE hoed berries before we went to school. When we came back from school, we hoed berries 'til dark…. That was our life," explained Harry Tamura. As farm kids who were the children of immigrants, Japanese American veterans in Oregon's Hood River valley grew up immersed in the robust work ethic of settlement farmers surviving in a new land. Their parents, struggling to eke out livings and support their families on small parcels of farmland, depended on their children's extra hands to manage the burgeoning farm chores. For Japanese American sons and daughters of all ages, work was necessary and expected.
So fathers, mothers, sons, and daughters worked together on their family farms, scattered among fertile, volcanic bluffs along the eastern slope of the Cascade Range, sixty-six miles east of Portland. Their secluded valley, just ten miles wide and twenty-six miles long, nestled at the base of snowcapped Mount Hood to the south and extended northward to where rugged, basaltic columns one thousand to three thousand feet tall met the wind-whipped waters of the Columbia River. The stream called Hood River brought glacial water from the mountain, dividing the valley into what locals dubbed the East and West Sides.¹ A river town formed at the nexus of its namesake and the Columbia River, served by river steamers and the Oregon Railroad. By the 1920s, the town had become a thriving business center, with two banks, three hotels, a railroad depot, a Carnegie library, six churches, telephone and electric service, a paid fire department, and fruit warehouses for its three thousand residents and valley farmers. In rural areas where most Japanese families lived, travel was cumbersome, and residents relied on services in their own small settlements, each with its own store, church, school, and often post office.² From the 1920s, the lives of the future veterans were confined largely to farms in those separate locales: Oak Grove, Frankton, and Barrett to the west; Dee to the southwest; Odell, Mount Hood, and Parkdale to the south; and Pine Grove to the east.
When we were small, we didn't do much [work],
recalled George Akiyama, the eldest of five Nisei whose family lived on an Oak Grove bluff west of town. "But when we were going to high school, our parents were just waiting for spring vacation! Springtime meant hoeing strawberry plants, thinning clusters of young Bartlett and Anjou pears, or spading rills in the soil, allowing irrigation water to reach plants at the ends of rows. Through summer, Nikkei family members cut and packed bundles of asparagus spears, picked strawberries, and continued to irrigate family crops. In the fall, as young seedlings bore fruit, the family picked, sorted, and packed apples and pears. During the winter, they pruned the limbs of overgrown fruit trees, then picked up and burned the excess
brush."
ISSEI FAMILY FOUNDATIONS
Their immigrant parents, the Issei, were Japanese nationals who had arrived in the United States near the turn of the twentieth century. Most intended to work on the West Coast only until they could earn enough money to buy land in Japan and secure their lives in their native country. Lured by exaggerated get rich quick
myths, Issei males were intent on earning money quickly, and most expected to return to Japan as wealthy men within three to five years. First solicited as laborers for jobs that locals avoided, young Issei men drove heavy steel spikes in railroad ties; they also felled trees and used dynamite to clear heavy stands of conifers for landowners. Sometimes they received plots of stumpland or brushland scattered around the Hood River valley in exchange for their labor. Often they saved their meager earnings to purchase marginal land covered with stumps, brush, or swamp. Intent on maximizing the use of their land, they grew strawberries, cane berries, and asparagus as quick cash crops between their newly planted apple and pear seedlings. During those early years, some also took on second jobs or leased property from others.³
Eventually Issei realized that, in order to achieve financial success, they would need to work longer in the United States. So the middle-aged men married, adhering to traditional Japanese values that emphasized family unit and lineage. Those who could afford the expense returned to Japan to seek wives. Most chose a more economical route: arranging picture bride marriages by exchanging letters and photos with young women in Japan.
Destitute Issei newlyweds lived in hovels and worked exhaustively each day. George Akiyama explained that his father cleared land for the orchards, pulled out those trees with stump pullers with a team of horses, blew out the trunks with dynamite, picked up all the roots, plowed and got the land ready for planting trees. While the trees were young, he raised asparagus. They had to have some income to keep them going.
His mother, as a new bride, worked alongside her husband on the farm. Every hand was needed to eke out a living.
FARM KIDS AND FAMILY VALUES
Not surprisingly, the second generation, the Nisei, grew up with orchards, fields, and barns as their playgrounds, while their mothers and older siblings worked nearby. As toddlers, Nisei climbed apple trees, played tag in the fields, and roasted volunteer potatoes [unplanted potatoes from reseeded plants] in the hot embers of bonfires for burning brush. When they grew older, Nisei children joined the family workforce. Shig Imai, the eldest of five sons, whose family farmed in Dee, lived eleven miles southwest of town. Every time we had a minute,
he recalled, we had to work on the farm, besides going to school.
For immigrant families of all ethnicities, survival in a foreign land demanded cooperation and selflessness from every member, young and old. John Bodnar's book on immigrant history describes the need for immigrant parents and children to work together, share scant resources, and mute personal needs and wants in order to help their families achieve even a modest standard of living. Simply put, the family's welfare took priority over individual interests. (Bodnar did note that, unlike Issei women, the wives of Irish, Italian, and Greek immigrants did not work outside the home.)⁴
For young Sagie Nishioka, the eldest of three Nisei raised in Dee, those family responsibilities were overwhelming. After his father died when he was fourteen years old, Nishioka became head of the family for his mother and two young siblings. Those were the days we had to do hard work,
he explained. The hours were ten hours for a regular day…. We rented about ten acres for strawberries and seven acres just for pears and cherries…. I had to drive the horses to cultivate. We didn't have very much money, so we weren't able to buy a lot of machinery.
Work and family survival took precedence over school. A lot of times I couldn't do homework because I was either too tired or had other things to do. Too many hours I was working, plus going to school. Because of this overload, I got sick.
Shouldering such heavy family burdens, young Sagie rose at five in the morning to do his chores. After school, he returned to the family's strawberry fields until seven or eight at night. Only then did he manage to tackle his homework. He was thankful that an understanding teacher recognized the symptoms of overwork and often sent him home to rest.
As newcomers in an alien society, Issei raised their children according to the lifestyle they knew best: the customs, diet, values, and language of Japan. Nisei learned to manipulate grains of rice and pickled vegetables with their chopsticks; chant gochiso-sama (the food/drink was very tasty) after meals; mold rice cakes filled with sweet beans for New Year's Day; and chide one another using parental cautions such as da-me (don't). With Hood River's undulating terrain and poor country roads, Nikkei families, who lived far apart, rarely socialized during slack times on their farms. Bound by common language and customs, Nikkei families still gathered for New Year feasts at one another's homes and, after the 1920s, met for parties and games at Japanese community centers in downtown Hood River and in Dee.
Japanese families in the United States were influenced by Japan's Meiji era (1868–1912). After the arrival of Commodore Matthew Perry in 1853 forced Japan to open to the West and the Tokugawa shogunate was overthrown in 1868, Emperor Meiji's regime initiated a period of modernization. Japan began adapting Western models as it revamped its government, economy, legal system, communication and transportation networks, schooling, and military. By the early twentieth century, the small island country had emerged as the foremost Asian military power. It financed this rapid industrialization and military expansion, however, by levying heavy taxes on Japanese farmers, who were already burdened by poor harvests, low prices, and a strained economy. Most immigrants, including those from Hood River, came from southwestern Japan,⁵ where the population was growing, farms were already smaller per capita, and residents (considered to be of pirate and warrior stock) were viewed as venturesome and enterprising.
⁶
Immigrants were buoyed by promising advertisements from emigration companies and encouraged by their own government. Many were younger sons whose elder brothers would inherit the family names and properties, others were elder sons determined to pay off family debts, and some were eager to avoid the military draft instituted in 1889. The majority of Hood River Nikkei families came from these farm families, beset by their country's economic and social pressures.⁷ And it was due to Issei investment in farming and the growth of their American-born children that they would stay in this country.
Norms that were prominent in Meiji Japan had roots in the country's long-standing feudal system and included both Confucian and Buddhist influences. The family
(ie) was central to Japanese society. Both the family and Japanese society in general were organized around a hierarchical structure. Status in society was based on a clear class system and prescribed roles imbued with a deep sense of duty to one's superiors; the husband and eldest son ranked at the top of the family hierarchy; family status was based on age and gender; and family members supported one another by emphasizing duty and obligation. Sociologist Harry Kitano observed that Issei were able to adapt more readily to their low status as immigrants in the United States because they had become accustomed to those roles in Japan. Therefore they easily transferred the deferential and compliant behaviors they had practiced in Japan to their relationships with America's white man,
or hakujin.⁸
From their Issei parents, Nisei also learned the value of enryo, or practicing deference, reserve, and restraint in everyday behavior. They demonstrated this quality by turning down second helpings, even when they were still hungry, or by accepting a less desirable item, knowing someone else preferred the one they wanted. It appeared when they turned down offers of help or hesitated to impose on others, speak out, or ask questions. Nisei recognized the impact of obligation
(on), feeling a duty to repay favors and gifts from friends, acquaintances, and family members. Heeding their parents' admonitions that the group's welfare took precedence over their own, Nisei learned to subordinate their wishes to those of siblings or friends. They learned how to avoid confrontation by keeping a low profile, staying in the background, and avoiding eye contact. They also acknowledged the value of a strong work ethic, especially one involving physical effort. In their new culture of everyday life,
Nisei grew up learning typical Japanese behaviors by watching their parents, who modeled conformity, obedience, duty, reserve, and work.⁹
STRADDLING TWO CULTURES
Yet, while becoming familiar with the culture of their parents, Nisei were also citizens of the United States of America. As they grew older, they found themselves in an awkward position, as if each straddled the Pacific Ocean, with one foot planted in Japan and the other entrenched in American soil. We had to grow up more or less in two worlds,
explained Shig Imai's younger brother Hit (Hitoshi). Our parents had their ways and we had our ways.
Affirming Nisei upbringing in two societies, sociologist Thomas D. Murphy noted that much of what the Nisei learned in one society they were expected to forget or disregard in the other.¹⁰ These ways
of the Nisei were not unique, for they could be likened to those of other second-generation Americans, according to Marcus Lee Hansen, the Norwegian American historian considered the father of immigration history. Acting on their standing as American citizens, the children of immigrants tended to reject their parents' heritage in favor of newly learned American traditions, in effect, becoming marginal in both societies.¹¹
For Nisei, language became the most obvious challenge, apparent from the first day of school. When I started first grade, I'm sure the only English words I knew were ‘hello’ and ‘good-bye,’
recalled Mam Noji, the eldest of four siblings. His family and three others shared a cramped home
You've reached the end of this preview. Sign up to read more!
Page 1 of 1